Developing Leaders

Developing leaders is one of the most important things you can do as a leader in student ministry to really set yourself up well to reach, disciple, and send students with the gospel. It doesn’t matter if you have 15 students in your ministry or if you have 1,500, we’ve got to be intentional about developing the leaders that God has entrusted to us to shepherd. But how? Today, I want to suggest a very simple and hands on approach to leadership development rather than a formal training session in a class setting.

Identity the key values you want to see in the leaders of your ministry. Take a few hours, lock yourself in your office (or better yet…unplug for a day and have a day of solitude to do this) and begin to ask yourself “What are the traits that I see for someone being an excellent student ministry leader?” This could be anything from visible on campuses, involved in families lives, available, creative,committed to mission, etc.. To know what your developing your leaders towards, you have to define your end goal. These values/traits that you establish are what you’re working your leaders towards.

Turn up the heat on those values: I read in Bill Hybels book Axiom about the idea that values need heat. When you add heat to something, you change its current state. Adding to heat to your values is key to your leadership development. How do you add heat? Publicly praise leaders in front of other leaders when you see them leading out in one of those area is a great place to start. It’s been said “You replicate what you celebrate.” When you praise/celebrate your key values, you’re pushing your other leaders towards the end goal.

Coach Leaders around those values: When you identify those values, you’ve begun to give yourself a framework in which you begin coaching and discipling your leaders. When you meet for coffee, you can begin to ask questions about how they’re doing in your identified key areas.